Powder-coated aluminum lightbox, acrylic
29.7 x 42 x 10 cm
Edition of 10
Presented by The Third Line Shop in collaboration with Global Art Daily – a digital publication and agency amplifying the UAE’s contemporary art scene with multicultural perspectives – "Mubeen, City as Archive" is an installation materializing commercial and utility-led design methodologies to celebrate small businesses that make up the vibrancy of Dubai.
Based on a poem called "Pravasis" from Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People (2017), UAE-based artist Christopher Joshua Benton has picked a series of job titles, ranging from ‘barber’ to ‘dressmaker’ to ‘carpenter’ to ‘shawarma slicer’ to produce specially-made lightboxes based on each profession’s inherent business line. Made by Faisal Abdu from Mubeen Calligraphy, an advertising studio based in the neighborhood of Satwa, Dubai, this series of ten lightboxes contain the same graphics used otherwise for commercial functions of the same businesses. Presenting this installation at The Third Line Shop, a retail space, highlights the material as well as the symbolic value of commodification and commercialization, in line with Dubai’s vernacular graphic design typologies.
For more information about the artist, click here.